Reviews

“The book encompasses many perspectives, with subjects ranging from the ordinary (such as listing games in which you can play as an archaeologist) to deeply philosophical considerations…Reinhard fulfilled his aim of introducing the five main themes of archaeogaming in one book. Archaeogaming forms a solid starting point for researchers who are ready to dive into the world (real or virtual) of archaeogaming and all its subfields.”• Internet Archaeology

“Reinhard’s willingness to move between the densely philosophical, the methodological, and the colloquial would make this book a nice option for an introductory archaeology class where students learn about theory, methods, procedures, and techniques, but less frequently have opportunities to put these ideas into practice…Reinhard’s book provides both the student and the scholar a way to think about what this kind of work will look like.”• The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

“This is a stellar piece of work that moves beyond disciplines and worlds.”• Anna Foka, Umeå University

Description

Video games exemplify contemporary material objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. Video games also serve as archaeological sites in the traditional sense as a place, in which evidence of past activity is preserved and has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology, and which represents a part of the archaeological record. This book serves as a general introduction to "archaeogaming"; it describes the intersection of archaeology and video games and applies archaeological method and theory into understanding game-spaces as both site and artifact.

Andrew Reinhard is the Director of Publications for the American Numismatic Society and is currently working towards his PhD in archaeology at the University of York’s (UK) Centre for Digital Heritage. He coined the term “archaeogaming” and runs the archaeogaming.com blog and twitter. In 2014, he and a team of archaeologists helped excavate the Atari Burial Ground in Alamogordo, New Mexico.